Peter Bishop
Peter Bishop is the son of the US Secretary of Defense Walter Bishop from the Parallel Universe. Peter has a recorded IQ of 190. Peter is a high school dropout, misfit, and nomad, who hasn't kept a job longer than two months. He's been a wild land fireman, a floor sweeper at a meat packing plant in Tennessee, a cargo pilot, and briefly a college chemistry professor -- a position he gained by falsifying a degree from MIT. Despite this, he managed to have papers published before he was exposed as a fraud. He was setting-up a business deal in Baghdad, Iraq when he was recruited by Olivia Dunham to gain access to his father. He has been arrested seven times. In Peter, Walter reveals to Olivia that he took the Peter we know from the parallel universe when he was a child, shortly after Walter's real son died of a rare disease. Childhood When Peter was younger, he had a rare disease that Peter would die if Walter didnt find a cure. Peter died in Walter's arms, it was too late. The desease was very much like Hepia, a form of bird flu.Unfortunately, Dr. Gross had died in 1936 so Walter designed a device to reach back in time and bring Dr. Gross back. But the device was apparently not used as Walter said Peter got better on his own. In There's More Than One Of Everything, Walter mentioned that "back then" (mid-1980's), when he and Bell took LSD, Walter lost something very precious and wanted to travel to the alternate reality they were envisioning, to get it back. This hints at the possibility that Peter died as a child and that Walter coveted the Peter from that other reality. During his childhood maladies, Peter collected coins as a distraction. In Dream Logic, Peter dreams of his childhood. In his dream, he is asleep in bed and is rousted by what appears to be Walter. Decorations in his childhood bedroom suggest he may have been raised in the parallel universe. He disappears from his bed. (Peter claims to have not had dreams during his teenage years). After Walter was institutionalized in the early 1990's, Peter moved to Allston with his mother because she could not afford the mortgage of their house in Cambridge. In Grey Matters, Walter is asked to associate words with images he is shown. Three images elicit the response "Peter" - a bowl of custard, a boy playing on a beach, and a child-sized coffin. This, along with the appearance of his gravestone in There's More Than One Of Everything appears to confirm that the "Peter" in this world died at the age of seven. Walter had indicated before that when Peter was a child, he was travelling with him to a family Thanksgiving dinner. Their car slipped off the road onto a frozen lake. The ice broke and the car began to sink. However, in Peter, Walter reveals to Olivia that he and Peter went through the ice as they came back from the alternate universe through a device that Walter had installed on the frozen surface of Reiden Lake. With their fate apparently certain, Walter and Peter were saved by the Observer. As a result, Walter owed a debt to the Observer; there is no suggestion that Peter has a debt of any kind.